What Is The Church

The church is defined as the people of God, but this is not very accurate in the sense that it is a 100% subjective appellation. Not only does it allow anyone to claim membership it leaves membership open to being inflated by liberal agendas. Depending on the agenda liberals will say everyone in the past was a theist and so all acts done in the past was done by theists or they will argue all evil is done by Christians and so any evil act was done by Christians, but the good stuff was all done by atheists. They create and modify the criteria to make the results come out in the way they predict.

Such indecisive categorization is not biblical. The bible makes it clear there is a sharp line of demarcation between good and evil and between those who are of God and those whose master is Satan. The church is the bibles term for the body of believers, but it has to have a more objective set of parameters than that is all believers. This kind of definition is basically circular with the one term being the definition of the other.

It is not that the church is not all believers but that we need a better way to identify believers than saying it is the people who make up the church.

At the same time this appellation does give us an insight into the nature of the church. If we are the body of Christ and the body of Christ are all those who come together to worship God then we can also determine that the church is the unity of believers and in fact that the church exists to the degree there is unity. What may be more important is that the division between believer and none believer is not just that there is a sharp division between them but that the division is based on those who are in unity and those who are divided.

This is interesting as there are many different denominations and sects and the church can hardly be said to be united, however, no one is going to say that they church is full of believers who all believe the same. The division into sects and churches is mirrored in the division between the believers themselves. Believers are no more unified than their organizations are.

This may appear to belie the claim that the church exits in the unity of the church, but instead what it tells us is that believers are not following God in the way they ought. If there is division in the church, then there is a falling away from the faith. Faith and unity cannot be separated one from the other.

The church is the body of Christ, it is a statement about the unity of all believers, not a unity of creeds and doctrines but a unity of purpose. The church is a shared culture opposed to Babylon.

If what we do as a Christian is not uniting the church, then it is not biblical or Christian. The church is not a thing it is an activity, a process. The coming together builds the church and it is the building of the church that defines the church, we are not the church unless what we do is building the church.